Ex-SEAL details how they got Bin Laden

New book comes amid debate over how much to reveal about special ops

Excerpts from 'No Easy Day'

Searching the Bin Laden compound

“We knew the house had at least four men. The only one left was Bin Laden. But I pushed those thoughts out of my head. It didn’t matter who it was on the third deck. We were possibly walking into a gunfight, and most gunfights at this range only last a few seconds. There was no margin of error. ‘Focus,’ I told myself.”

Killing Bin Laden

“We saw the man lying on the floor at the foot of his bed. He was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt, loose tan pants, and a tan tunic. The point man’s shots had entered the right side of his head. Blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull. In his death throes, he was still twitching and convulsing. Another assaulter and I trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless.”

Getting the evidence

“It was strange to see such an infamous face up close. Lying in front of me was the reason we had been fighting for the last decade. It was surreal trying to clean blood off the most wanted man in the world so that I could shoot his photo. I had to focus on the mission. Right now, we needed some good quality photos. This photo could end up being widely viewed, and I didn’t want to mess it up.”

Why he wrote the book

“To date, how the mission to kill Bin Laden has been reported is wrong. Even reports claiming to have the inside story have been incorrect. I felt like someone had to tell the true story. To me, the story is bigger than the raid itself and much more about the men at the command who willingly go into harm’s way. … Since May 1, 2011, everyone from President Obama to Admiral McRaven has given interviews about the operation. If my commander in chief is willing to talk, then I feel comfortable doing the same.”

Matt Bissonnette and another Navy SEAL crept up the staircase toward the third floor of the Osama bin Laden compound, senses on overdrive. It had been 15 minutes since their helicopter crash-landed outside, and they expected the al-Qaeda mastermind to be armed and waiting on the landing above.

These are the Tom Clancy-style details offered in the controversial new book by one of the fighters involved in the May 2011 mission that killed the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Called “No Easy Day: The Autobiography of a Navy SEAL,” the book has landed squarely in the middle of a national political debate over releasing details of special operations missions and prompted potential Pentagon legal action against the author even before it hits store shelves today.

The tale reveals provocative details about the now-famous night mission in Pakistan. Bissonnette, who was second up the stairs, writes that his “point man” fired two shots when he saw a man peeking out of a doorway ahead. (Click page 2 link to continue reading story.)

Entering the room, they discovered the man, later identified as Bin Laden, with a bullet hole in his head. The body was still twitching, and Bissonnette and another SEAL fired several rounds into its chest.

That action followed a gunfight at a nearby building during which the author says AK-47 bullets whizzed inches from his head.

The decorated former SEAL, who left the Navy earlier this year, also makes what are sure to be controversial observations.

He characterizes Bin Laden as a coward for not putting up a fight, despite the fact that they discovered guns on a shelf above where the terrorist leader was standing when shot. Bissonnette writes that he checked the weapons. Bin Laden had not chambered a round.

“He hadn’t even prepared a defense. He had no intention of fighting. He asked his followers for decades to wear suicide vests or fly planes into buildings, but didn’t even pick up his weapon. In all of my deployments, we routinely saw this phenomenon. The higher up the food chain the targeted individual was, the bigger a pussy he was.”

Bissonnette was a member of the ultra-elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, unofficially known as SEAL Team 6. Before joining that Virginia-based unit in 2004 or 2005, he was stationed in Coronado with SEAL Team 5. In the book, he says that part of his tryout for “DEVGRU” was a swim in San Diego Bay.

The book is written under the name Mark Owen, to protect the former SEAL against backlash. In the weeks leading up to the publishing date, his real identity was first revealed on Fox News then confirmed by The Associated Press. The original publishing date of Sept. 11 was moved up a week due to the media furor.

An interesting dissonance in the special operations community has emerged over the publication.

A political committee called OPSEC was formed recently to criticize President Barack Obama for immediately announcing the news and some details of the Bin Laden mission.

In an Aug. 15 video released by this group, retired and former special operations people scold Obama for trying to score a political victory over getting bin Laden. They say the people who deserve the praise are the team that was on point that day.

Now, as one of those team members has come forward to give praise where praise is due, the response has been mixed.

Navy Adm. William McRaven, the U.S. Special Operations commander who managed the mission, expressed public concern late last month about former special operators “using their celebrity status to advance their personal or professional agendas.”

The Defense Department said last week that Bissonnette may be in violation of confidentiality agreements that he signed in 2007 and in April 2012 before he left the Navy.

In the book’s introduction, Bissonnette says that he made the “long, hard decision” to publish because “why and how the mission was successful” has been lost.

“This book will finally give credit to those who earned it,” who according to “No Easy Day,” are those involved in the mission from soup to nuts: the intelligence analysts and helicopter crews, in addition to the SEALs.

Bissonnette writes that he took great pains to not disclose anything classified, even though he did not give the Pentagon a chance to vet the book in advance. The former SEAL writes that he hired a former Special Operations attorney to make sure that no forbidden topics were mentioned and that he plans to donate most of his proceeds to charity.

“No Easy Day” follows a recent bumper crop of books by former Navy SEALs, breaking a tradition of keeping a low profile. The motto in the SEAL community is “the quiet professional,” a source of pride for many.

One recent example is former Navy SEAL sniper Brandon Webb’s memoir, “The Red Circle,” a New York Times best-seller.

Webb, who lives in San Diego part time, said he stuck to operations that were a decade old and had already been discussed in other publications.

“I purposely left out my time working with a three-letter agency in Iraq because of the confidentiality agreement I signed,” said Webb, now editor of the military-related website SOFREP.com.

Bissonnette has a great reputation, he said. “But it had to be challenging for one individual to walk a thin line with regards to OPSEC (operational security) and timeliness of this book.”

It’s unclear from the text if Bissonnette intended to slam the president in the pivotal months leading up to the November election and thereby weaken the cornerstone of Obama’s defense record.

In a CBS News interview available on the web, Bissonnette said his intent was not partisan. The CBS News program “60 Minutes” is scheduled to air a long interview with Bissonnette on Sunday.

“This book is not political whatsoever. It doesn’t bad-mouth either party, and we specifically chose September 11th to keep it out of the politics,” the former SEAL said on camera. “You know, if these … crazies on either side of the aisle want to make it political, shame on them. This is a book about September 11th, and it needs to rest on September 11th.”

In “No Easy Day,” Bissonnette writes that he and his fellow SEALs were already not fans of Obama, though he doesn’t elaborate on why. He also notes that just after the mission, his team discussed how they had just gotten the president re-elected.

In the text, Bissonnette asks his friend, “Well, would you rather not have done this?’”

The author seems to conclude: “We were tools in their toolbox, and when things go well they promote it. They inflate their roles. But we should have done it. It was the right call to make. Regardless of the politics that would come along with it, the end result was what we all wanted.”